No Phone In The Phone Booth (TDDK week 2018)
by ttyphlosion
Summary: It was almost easy to make friends after Midoriya, so it made sense that it would be even easier to lose them. No matter how solid his friends may seem, nothing lasts forever. Right? D2: Insecurities "It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." - Lewis Carroll


Shouto is frustrated, and it shows in his training with Endeavor. He uses his fire more, as he has since the sports festival, but it's a little too much more. It almost starts to match the height of his father's flames, and in addition to using his ice to assist him, that made him very tired in the evenings. He sleeps well, and spends a whole morning wondering if it would be morally correct to mentally thank his father, or if he even wants to.

But that's because no one's talking to him, despite having exchanged phone numbers and promises to keep in touch with most of class 1-A before break let out.

True, he wasn't the most conversational student, so he wasn't the one to normally text first. But by now, the sixth day into break, with not a single peep from any of his peers, he had at least one plain 'hello' in everyone's inboxes. He must, because he sent them all in a fit of desperation on the fourth night.

Alas, they're all unread.

So he dodges his father's punches to the best of his ability and wonders where he went wrong.

_It was the mall, wasn't it? I turned the invitation down to see my mother, but maybe they don't realize how much visiting her then meant to me._ He thinks. _They could have taken it as a rejection of friendship. I need to fix this, somehow. But how do I fix it if they aren't responding?_

Endeavor lunges forward and grabs him by his shoulders, knocking his skull against Shouto's. He's hard-headed and also on fire, so it hurts very much. He manages to stay standing, but his vision swims.

_Why isn't Midoriya responding? He knows how important my mother is to me, but then again..._ He forms a knife of ice around his fist, and aims for Endeavor's not-on-fire side. _He was held hostage by Shigaraki at that shopping mall while I wasn't there. _

A couple more blows are exchanged, and Shouto loses again with one of Endeavor's fists pressing down on his solar plexus and the other clamped around his throat. He drops his temperature to lessen the damage of his inevitable neck burns, glaring Endeavor in the eye all the while. He meets it with doubled intensity.

He's released to his room, so he goes to bed without dinner but definitely not without checking his phone five times a minute.

There's nothing.

As he lays in bed wishing the hurt to go away, he wonders if he should go to Midoriya's house to check that he's even alive. But he can be alive without texting Shouto, and if he won't answer his texts, then he probably won't want him showing up at his house.

Shouto clenches his teeth and opens his phone again, staring at his pitiful mass of hellos and good mornings.

**Midoriya, please**

He sends, and shuts off his phone.

The next day, Shouto swears he hears the doorbell when Endeavor roundhouse kicks him into the spare elliptical. His back screams in protest, but he scrabbles for purchase on the machine to pull himself up with. He accidentally grabs one of the pedals at first and fumbles.

When he sees Endeavor, he's standing very still, like he's listening for something. Oh, was he not going crazy? The doorbell actually rang?

Endeavor looks briefly at him down his nose before turning and leaving the room, toning down his bonfire to its regular facial hair on his way out the sliding door.

Shouto sags against the elliptical and breathes, watching the door carefully. After a long moment, he gets up properly and readjusts his t-shirt to cover the bruises on his chest and arms. He makes his way to the door, limping slightly, and opens it a crack to look up and down the hall. His father's pounding footsteps are absent, and the hallway is empty.

Shouto swiftly walks to his room on light feet and closes the door behind him, keeping his hand on it for a couple moments and breathing deep. He doesn't know where Endeavor went, but he's surprised he made it out of there unscathed.

A few short minutes later, a light knock raps on his door. It's Fuyumi. He gets up and opens it for her, and she stands there wringing her hands. "Oh, I found you. There's, uh," she says, "I think someone from school to see you? He's short and scary."

At 'short', his first thought is Midoriya, and his heart leaps, but 'scary'? Was it Tokoyami? No, Fuyumi would say 'bird', and also he's pretty sure that guy didn't know where he lived. Maybe it's Midoriya, and he's here and angry and ready to chew him out for being a terrible friend. He furrows his brows, peeking out into the hall and pushing some of his hair behind his ear. He should be the one doing the chewing out, he's the one who's being ignored. He looks back to Fuyumi, who still seems nervous. "Guess I'll get him. Thanks, Fuyumi."

"Gotcha. I'll be in the, the living room if you need anything," she says, and walks off.

Shouto goes to the front of the house and since their house is classic as all hell, there's no peephole luxury for him to assess Midoriya's state before opening the door.

"Hey." he greets.

"Hello. May I come inside?" Midoriya says sweetly. He's usually polite, but this is just creepy. Fuyumi was right. He rakes his eyes up and down Shouto's body, sizing him up and making him bristle. Then Midoriya has the audacity to raise his eyebrows expectantly.

Shouto doesn't know if there's anything he can say, so he doesn't say anything until they reach his room and the door's closed behind them –

"What was with that –"

"Why haven't you –"

– and they start speaking at that same time.

"You first." Shouto huffs. He prepares his emotional state to withstand a large-scale attack.

"Fine," Midoriya sighs, looking around his sparse room. "Why haven't you been answering anyone's texts? Are you okay?"

Shouto snorts bad-naturedly, blatantly ignoring his friend's– the second question, along with the note of concern in his tone. "You're the ones ignoring mine."

"No, we _aren't."_ Midoriya screws up his face. Shouto thinks it's in confusion. He holds out his hand. "Give me your phone."

Shouto doesn't have it in his pocket, so he turns away from Midoriya to retrieve it from his futon. He searches the crumpled sheets a second longer than necessary in an attempt to get his thoughts together. It doesn't work. He tosses it at him.

Midoriya catches the phone easily, and tries to turn it on, then frowns and holds the button longer. Shouto forgot that he'd shut it down last night. He feels a little guilty, especially when Midoriya nails him with a glare as his phone does the start-up jingle. Maybe they all texted him last night. No, that's stupid, why would they do that?

"Did something happen?" Midoriya asks while the phone's still booting up.

"No," is Shouto's answer. It's quiet, and also a lie. Tons of things happen when you live with the number two hero, but not many to condone _ignoring his friends for a solid week._ Which he _didn't do._

Midoriya hums neutrally and looks like he opens the phone. He peeks over it at Shouto with raised eyebrows. "You really need to set a password."

Shouto mimics his neutral hum without trying to, picking at his blanket. After a moment, Midoriya sits down next to him, brows furrowed and nibbling on his finger as he tends to do while looking at the screen. His bag's sitting by the door.

He mumbles for a while as he scrolls through all Shouto's contacts, the large majority made up of his classmates, then Endeavor, Fuyumi , and Natsuo. His mother doesn't have a phone, because she hasn't really needed one before.

Then something happens that Shouto doesn't expect. Midoriya tears up. "What the hell?" He whispers, eyes locked on something on the screen. It doesn't take very long for Shouto to panic, because he knows Midoriya cries a lot but no one who can deal with it is present like Uraraka or Iida or even Kirishima, goddamnit–

Since he can't do anything about it, he ignores it. "What is it?" He says, referring to what's on the screen. Midoriya doesn't move, so he inches closer and takes his phone.

There's a lot of words, and a checked box with a padlock icon over it. Shouto doesn't understand much, but some bad and fancy-sounding moderation thing is activated. He taps the box but the padlock flares. He taps it more, even though he knows it's hopeless. He doesn't even remotely recognize this page, so it was pretty fucking obvious who did this.

Shouto drops his phone on his blanket and lets his face fall into his hands to laugh. Midoriya puts his hand on his shoulder.

"I thought you all hated me," Shouto snorts at himself, and then starts crying.

"Todoroki…" Midoriya says, at loss and sounding a little like he's crying himself. Shouto moves his hands to physically suppress the noises he's making and screws his eyes shut with the effort of forcing himself to shut _up._ Midoriya interrupts with, "Can I you – can I hug you?"

Shouto can't think of anything else he wants right now. He nods.

Midoriya shifts his legs so he's facing Shouto, by the sound of it, then tugs him forward with the shoulder his hand's been resting on. He hugs him gently, like he's running the risk of breaking something by touching him alone, but then he hiccups and squeezes him closer.

Shouto seems to forget his bruises with Midoriya's arms around him. He closes his eyes and lifts his hands to his friend's shoulderblades to hold him closer, not knowing if that's the wrong place because he's a little out of practice. Either way, he revels in the sheer warmth of another body embracing him and lets hot tears run down his face silently as his chest trembles.

"I'm sorry I blamed you." Midoriya whispers, and his breath brushes across Shouto's neck. His sobs are louder than his, but they both sound gross with their erratic breathing, so that's not really worth pointing out.

"I'm just glad you don't hate me," Shouto tries to laugh, to do something else with the jitters wracking his lungs. Midoriya just holds him closer.

"You're one of my best friends, Todoroki, and you saved my _ass_ back with Stain. I couldn't hate you if I tried."

Todoroki cracks open his eyelids a little. His nose feels like it's burning with the force of his tears. He moves up one hand to rest on Midoriya's neck. "Do you know how stubborn you are? I'm sure – sure that you could pull it off." He smiles at the green hair pressed against the side of his face. "Please don't try."

"Don't worry, I won't," Midoriya laughs, too.


End file.
